Investment thesis tracker
Something has to hold the reasoning. Most people use a spreadsheet.
It works for about four positions and then quietly stops, because the hard part was never the writing. It was the reading that comes after.
The definition
What an investment thesis tracker is
The short answer, and the two halves of the job.
An investment thesis tracker is a tool that records why you own each position and then checks that reasoning against what actually happens: filings, earnings, competitor moves, and the price levels you set in advance. It has two halves, and only one of them is a form to fill in.
The first half is a record: the claims you committed to, with numbers and dates, written where you cannot quietly revise them afterwards. The second half is the reading, which is where every homemade system fails. A claim nobody checks is a note, and a folder of notes is not a tracker.
At a fund both halves are documents with somebody's name on them. What that desk writes about one position, and which of its four documents you can produce yourself, is on the hedge fund process, for one person.
The default
Against the spreadsheet you already have
It wins two of these four outright, and they are not trivial ones.
If you hold four positions and read every filing that touches them, the spreadsheet is the right answer and a subscription is not. The case for a tool starts at the point where the reading stops fitting in the time you have for it.
The criteria
Eight questions to ask before you trust one
Written so they work on any product in this category. Two of them are things Solon does not do, and the page says which.
Does it quote the source line?
A tool that says a claim is pressed and cannot show you the sentence it read is asking you to trust a summary of a document you could have read yourself.
Solon: Yes. Every reading quotes the line and links the filing.
Does it grade against your claim or the ticker?
Sentiment scoring on a symbol is the common substitute. It looks like monitoring and answers a question you did not ask.
Solon: Against your claims. That is the whole design.
Can you see and correct what it wrote?
If software turns your sentence into a claim, you have to be able to read that conversion and fix it before it counts, or it is monitoring its own guess.
Solon: Yes. Nothing counts until you keep or rewrite it.
Does it keep the decision you made?
Knowing a claim broke is half of it. What you then chose to do, and whether it worked, is the half that makes you better next year.
Solon: Yes, scored against what the market did afterwards.
Does it hold your brokerage credentials?
Read-only connections exist. A tool asking for a password that can place trades is asking for more than its job requires.
Solon: No credentials. Read-only, and it never trades.
What happens to your writing if you leave?
Your thesis history is the asset you are building. A tool that cannot export it is renting it back to you.
Solon: No. Export is not built yet, and that is a real gap.
Which sources does it actually read?
"Monitors the market" is not an answer. A tool reading only headlines will miss the table in a 10-Q that settles your claim, and a tool reading only filings will miss a rival shipping the thing you said nobody could build.
Solon: SEC filings through EDGAR, earnings prints, headlines and competitor moves, with the line it read quoted every time.
Is it an adviser?
Anything issuing buy and sell recommendations is in a different regulated business, with different incentives about what it tells you.
Solon: No, and never. It reads; you decide.
Questions
Common questions
What is an investment thesis tracker?
An investment thesis tracker records why you own each position and checks that reasoning against what happens next: filings, earnings, competitor moves and the price levels you set. It has two halves, a record of the claims you committed to with numbers and dates, and the reading that tests them. A tool with only the first half is a notes app.
Can I track my investment thesis in a spreadsheet?
Yes, and for a handful of positions it is the right answer. A spreadsheet holds the claims perfectly, costs nothing and bends to your process. What it cannot do is notice that a 10-Q was filed this morning and that a table inside it settles one of your claims. The sheet only knows what you go and put in it, which is the part that stops happening in a busy month.
What should an investment thesis tracker do?
Hold the claims in terms a document can settle, read the documents that bear on them, quote the line it read rather than summarising, let you correct anything it wrote before it counts, and keep the decision you made when a claim broke so it can be scored later. Anything grading sentiment on a ticker instead of testing your specific claims is doing a different job.
How is this different from a portfolio tracker?
A portfolio tracker models the asset: what you hold, what it is worth, what it has returned. A thesis tracker models the investor: what you believed, whether it is still true, and what you did about it. Most people need the first and already have it inside their brokerage. Neither one can answer the other's question.
Is an investment thesis tracker worth paying for?
It depends on how many positions you hold and how much primary material you can honestly read each week. Below about five names, a spreadsheet and an hour on filing day is hard to beat. The case for paying starts where the reading stops fitting: ten to fifty names, each with two or three claims, against filings, prints and competitor moves that arrive on somebody else's schedule.
Do these tools connect to your brokerage?
Some do, through read-only connections that import positions so you do not type them in. Reading positions and placing trades are different permissions, and a tool whose job is monitoring has no reason to hold credentials that can move your money. Worth asking directly before connecting anything.
The product
What Solon does
Said plainly, because this is the one page whose reader is looking for the thing.
You say why you own each position, typed or spoken, and Solon writes it down as named claims carrying numbers a filing can settle. You keep or rewrite every one before it counts. Filings, headlines, earnings and rival moves are then graded against those claims each night, and you hear when one is pressed, quoting the line that was read, with the plan you set in advance beside it.
It never places a trade and never moves your money. It is not an investment adviser and it will not tell you what to buy. What it produces is a record of your own judgment: what you believed, when, what happened next, and whether you were right.
The nightly mechanism is on how it works, the practice itself on investment thesis monitoring, and if you have not written the claims yet, start at how to write an investment thesis.
Still tracking it in a spreadsheet?
That works until the reading stops fitting in the time you have. This is what happens after.
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